As computing devices become increasing ubiquitous in personal, industrial, corporate and governmental settings, the interoperability between the various computers and other data processing devices becomes increasingly important. In aerospace, homeland security and military settings, for example, more and more emphasis is being placed upon “network centric operations” that leverage information sharing between aircraft, vehicles, command centers, robotic devices and/or human-operated computing devices to accomplish desired tasks such as identifying a target, gathering intelligence data, engaging an enemy and/or the like. As a result, future defense and aerospace technologies will be increasingly reliant upon information sharing and interoperability between widely differing computing systems. Similar emphasis on interoperability between disjoint systems is occurring in aerospace, industrial and other settings, as well as in the commercial marketplace.
While increased interoperability is generally thought to improve the flexibility, effectiveness and overall value of data processing systems present on the battlefield and elsewhere, quantifying this increased value can be difficult in practice. Individual devices can be readily benchmarked in terms of processing power, cost, mobility and other indicia of value. Most of these conventional metrics, however, fail to adequately account for the “intangible” benefits that result from aggregation and interoperability, including improved situation awareness, decreased response times, improved asset utilization, and/or the like. Because most current metrics evaluate systems on an individual component basis, no tools or methodologies presently exist for adequately quantifying the specific advantages of interoperability. As a result, the value provided by network-centric environments is frequently understated and/or misunderstood.
It is therefore desirable to create systems and techniques for assessing the effectiveness of network-centric systems in quantifiable terms. In addition, it is desirable to create benchmarking systems and techniques that can be used in comparing different systems, scenarios, assets, and/or other factors relating to network-centric environments. These and other desirable features and characteristics will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and this background section.